Setting up RPi to work with Hailo HAT¶

A clean, headless bring-up of a Raspberry Pi 5 with a Hailo AI HAT — from a blank SD card to hailortcli fw-control identify reporting the NPU. After the first boot no monitor is attached; everything is driven over SSH.

1. Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite (headless)¶

Use Raspberry Pi Imager and choose Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) — "Lite" means no desktop, exactly what a headless appliance wants.

Set at flash time: hostname (e.g. edge-infer-01), username, SSH public key, Wi-Fi with the correct country, and timezone.

2. First boot & headless basics (if not preset)¶

If the customization didn't take, attach HDMI + keyboard once, create the user, then set the essentials:

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname edge-infer-01
# keep /etc/hosts in sync, or sudo warns "unable to resolve host edge-infer-01":
echo "127.0.1.1 edge-infer-01" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

sudo systemctl enable --now ssh
install -d -m700 ~/.ssh
echo 'ssh-ed25519 AAAA... you@laptop' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

3. Wi-Fi on 5 GHz (the India / regulatory gotcha)¶

Two Pi quirks bite here: the radio is rfkill-blocked until a country is set (Wi-Fi shows as "unavailable"), and under IN the 5 GHz band only works on the low channels 36–48. Set the country, then connect:

sudo raspi-config nonint do_wifi_country IN
sudo nmcli device wifi connect '<SSID>' password '<password>'

Full walkthrough + the router-channel fix → How to fix Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi that won't connect.

4. SSH key login¶

ssh anandas@edge-infer-01.local       # or ssh anandas@<ip>

If the key isn't in place yet (or you can't paste it at a console) → How to copy your SSH key to a headless machine. After a re-flash, clear a stale host key with ssh-keygen -R <ip>.

5. Static IP¶

Raspberry Pi OS uses NetworkManager, so pin the address with nmcli (there's no static-IP field in custom.toml) — use 192.168.0.105/24, gateway 192.168.0.1, and add a matching router DHCP reservation. Full steps → How to set a static IP with NetworkManager (nmcli).

6. Base upgrade¶

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y
sudo reboot

7. Install HailoRT — the lean set (no UI stack)¶

hailo-all is a meta-package that drags in hundreds of packages: a full GUI/GStreamer/OpenCV/TAPPAS/rpicam-apps stack. For a headless image-inference box you only need the runtime, the PCIe driver, and (optionally) the Python bindings:

sudo apt install hailort hailort-pcie-driver python3-hailort
sudo reboot          # required so the hailo_pci kernel module loads

Add hailo-tappas-core (GStreamer pipelines) only if/when you tackle live video.

8. Verify the NPU¶

lsmod | grep hailo            # -> hailo_pci ...
ls -l /dev/hailo0             # device node present
hailortcli scan               # -> Device: 0001:01:00.0
hailortcli fw-control identify

Expected:

Firmware Version: 4.23.0 (release,app,extended context switch buffer)
Board Name:          Hailo-8
Device Architecture: HAILO8

That's the milestone — HailoRT is talking to the Hailo-8 over PCIe, and the box is ready to run compiled .hef models. Next: obtain/compile a HEF (see Data Flow Compiler) and run one end-to-end.

Gotchas, in one place¶

• custom.toml ignored on a raw dd flash → use Imager's customization, or configure on first boot.
• Wi-Fi "unavailable" = rfkill until do_wifi_country is set.
• 5 GHz won't associate under IN unless the router is on channel 36–48.
• Static IP is NetworkManager now, not dhcpcd.conf; no custom.toml field for it.
• sudo warns "unable to resolve host" until /etc/hosts carries the new hostname.
• hailo-all is huge — install hailort + hailort-pcie-driver + python3-hailort for headless.
• PCIe driver DKMS fallback — won't survive kernel upgrades unattended.